Tragic Details About Regina King
The following article includes references to suicide.
Regina King is, by all measures, a superstar. An Oscar- and Golden Globe-winning actor, King has starred in movies as wide-ranging as "Boyz n the Hood," "Jerry Maguire," "A Cinderella Story," and "If Beale Street Could Talk" (the latter of which won her those well-deserved awards). According to her IMDb page, she has not stopped at just movies either, with recurring roles in such prominent TV shows as "227," "24," "The Big Bang Theory," and "Watchmen," among many other credits. King has also worked as a director (most notably on 2020's "One Night in Miami..."), a producer, and a soundtrack vocalist. For all of her multi-faceted work, the actor has earned an estimated net worth of $16 million.
But she is much more than just a famous and successful person in show business; King is a beloved figure in Hollywood. "Regina is full of life," director Barry Jenkins said as part of a 2021 Vanity Fair cover story on her. "I learned pretty quickly, you just, when Regina is in the room, you let Regina have the room," King's one-time co-star, Sandra Bullock, chimed in. "Everyone's gonna benefit from it, even me."
Despite the glitz, glam, industry respect, and accolades, however, Regina King sadly hasn't always had things easy in life. She has had to endure more than her fair share of devastating times, which she has spoken about candidly in many interviews, vulnerably walking us through the tragic experiences that shaped the artist and woman she is today.
Regina King's parents divorced when she was young
Divorce may be an ultra-common occurrence (there is close to one divorce for every two marriages in the U.S., according to the CDC), but its effects aren't any less devastating — not only for the divorcing couple, per Psychology Today, but also significantly for the children of divorced parents, as World Psychiatry notes. But Regina King doesn't need to turn to science to know this to be true: Her own parents, Gloria and Thomas King, divorced when she was eight years old, and this time in her life more than left its mark on the young girl.
Describing the events leading up to her mom and dad's separation, Regina explained that they slept in different rooms and argued loudly for a long time before it eventually came to a head. "My parents' conduct during and after their divorce — from the constant fighting to their eventual estrangement — was very disappointing and hurtful to me," the actor wrote in the 2017 book, "He Never Came Home: Interviews, Stories, and Essays from Daughters on Life Without Their Fathers." "I was more disappointed and even more hurt when my father seemed to just drift out of our lives. I only realized much later that the divorce really had little to do with that. It had more to do with who he was as a man."
Thankfully, Gloria remained devoted to her kids. "My sister and I were definitely allowed to dream big," Regina told USA Today. "My mother put no restrictions on that." We love to hear that.
Her father was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease
After Regina King's parents divorced, she and younger sister Reina King had a fairly close relationship with their father for a while — staying at his place many weekends — until they didn't. "Then there was a shift," the star wrote in "He Never Came Home." "I can't pinpoint when or how it started, but somewhere along the way, my dad just drifted away. Those every-other-weekend visits slowed down, too, but I didn't notice it right away."
Later, when Regina was an adult and already acting, Thomas King was sadly diagnosed with Parkinson's disease. "I didn't know what it was or how it would affect his life, but just the thought of him facing a serious health issue was heartbreaking to me," she wrote. "And things only got worse." She and older sister Pat helped take care of their father until his death in 2009. In those final years, Regina "sensed" how he was feeling: "I'm sure he had regrets about the past. I could see it on his face. I had regrets, too. I regretted the number of years that had passed without us having a better relationship."
Although the actor hasn't spoken much about Thomas outside of this essay, she admitted to taking inspiration from him in her film directorial debut, "One Night in Miami...," telling "CBS This Morning: Saturday (via CBS News) of the movie's protagonists, "I felt like I knew all of these men. I saw my son in these conversations. I saw my father in these conversations. They love, they're vulnerable, they're strong."
Regina King went through her own painful divorce
Decades after Regina King saw her parents go through the experience of divorce, she sadly went through a divorce of her own in 2007. She was once married to music producer Ian Alexander Sr., with whom she had one son named Ian after his father, but things didn't work out between them in the end — something the actor regretted for their son's sake.
"I was married for nine years before my husband and I separated and eventually divorced," King wrote in "He Never Came Home." "Just as I'd watched my parents arguing and fighting, my son watched his parents arguing and fighting. It was like history repeating itself, and I felt terrible about him having to witness that." Thankfully, her post-divorce relationship with her ex-husband was nothing like her parents' had been. "It's kind of crazy to think that I've now been divorced longer than I was married, but I appreciate the journey, because it brought my ex and I back to a friendship that helped us become great co-parents," she explained in the essay.
After the breakdown of her marriage, King notably dated fellow actor Malcolm Jamal Warner for a couple of years, though she kept it largely private. "I have to keep something for me and that has to be my personal relationships," she told The Daily Beast in 2012. "Neither one of us is out there talking about it and we won't be." But King and Warner eventually broke up in 2013, as reported by New York Daily News.
She turned down projects to take care of her son
We all have to make difficult choices. In the balance of Regina King's life, there was no question that her child came before work. She didn't give up on her career to take care of Ian Alexander Jr., but she compromised: The star decided not to accept any acting jobs that took her out of her and her son's hometown.
When asked by "CBS This Morning: Saturday" host Michelle Miller, "Was it hard to say no to projects?" in 2021, the answer came easily to King. "No," she said (via CBS News). "I've seen so many examples of parents that have had to make the choice to not be there as consistent in their children's lives, and just kind of what the aftermath was of that." The actor-director simply knew that wasn't the life she wanted for her only child. While speaking with InStyle about risks she'd taken throughout her fruitful career, King cited this choice. "What comes to mind is that the biggest risk I took career-wise was not to take any jobs outside of L.A. when Ian was about 9 years old," she explained.
Although this all meant she had to take more TV roles than she had in the past and turn down certain movies, King had no regrets and was able to see how this choice benefited her in the end. "That's how my TV career started," she told SheKnows. "The answer is making, most of the time, making the tough choice leads you to down a beautiful path."
Anti-Black racism has weighed heavily on Regina King
Being Black in America comes with an inherent and painful set of challenges, something of which Regina King is all too aware. Notably, she finds that Black men are typically depicted in a narrow way in media and wanted to change that conversation through 2020's "One Night in Miami...," which tells the true story of an exchange between Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, Sam Cooke, and Jim Brown, which touched King. "It really humanized them," she told InStyle. "I feel like we don't get the opportunity to see Black men like this, and most of us have Black men who are this layered in our lives, who have this much love and strength and vulnerability."
At the height of the Black Lives Matter protests that same year, King knew that she had to use her platform to influence change in every way she could. She wore a t-shirt featuring Breonna Taylor — who was killed by police in her own home in Louisville, Kentucky — and the words "Say Her Name" to the 2020 Emmys (via Allure). For King, her industry has a responsibility to depict the reality of race relations in America — especially when it comes to police killings.
"Hollywood has been responsible for perpetuating the idea that officers should use excessive force on Black people and I'm not down with that," she told Harper's Bazaar in 2021. "On the flipside, I've been a part of projects that actually shine a light on the reality of the police's relationship with the Black community."
Regina King has often felt held back as a Black woman
Regina King is especially cognizant of living at the intersection of Blackness and womanhood, and the extra challenges these two identities have presented for her throughout her life and career. For The Hollywood Reporter, filmmaker Gina Prince-Bythewood asked King if she felt that she was "touching greatness," and the actor circumvented the question in her answer. Reflecting on why that was, she said, "I feel like just as Black women, we are so conditioned to not feel that it's OK to want to be great. Hence how I came into my whole response when you asked that question. But also, something I find often with Black women is that you give us a little window, we're going to kick it all the way open and take that moment."
"Miss Congeniality 2" co-star Sandra Bullock also addressed her and King's shared womanhood to Vanity Fair. "We've always had to be scrappy and put your head down and do the work and be grateful for what you have," Bullock said. "As a Black woman, [King has] had to do that a thousand times more."
In an interview with The Guardian, King explained how her identity blocked her confidence in a way at the start of her career and stopped her from taking too many risks in her work at first: "I don't think that that's specific to being Black and being a woman, but I do feel like being Black and being a woman, it does make it harder to break through those moments, you know?"
She had to witness her son navigate racism
When Regina King's son, Ian Alexander Jr., was little, he wasn't particularly aware of the politics of race. He couldn't really see what difference it made for his friends to have diverse backgrounds; they were his "rainbow coalition," as his famous mom put it. While speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2021, King told a story about when her son was a pre-teen: "When he was younger, he was always paying attention to our conversations, and he asked me, 'Why when you guys talk' — you guys being adults — 'do you always have to ask what color someone was?'"
Explaining that Ian Jr.'s friend group became more predominantly Black a few years later, King attributed this shift to his growing understanding of racial dynamics, and of the racism that was actually present in his own circles. She said, "It was because certain things were happening in conversations that were making him go, 'Woo, OK, this doesn't feel right.' Certain things that some of the white boys would say that he was like, 'Yo, you shouldn't feel comfortable saying that.'"
It may have taken Ian Jr. a while to understand where his mom was coming from, but what's certain is that he never took her for granted: To mark King's birthday in January 2021, he wrote on Instagram, "To have you as my mother is the greatest gift I could ask for. To be all that you are while always having the time to be there, love and support me unconditionally is truly remarkable."
Regina King became used to bottling her emotions
The pandemic brought on intense emotional upheaval for just about every person in the world — and Regina King certainly found herself swept up in the strangeness and tragedy of it all. "Sometimes I feel myself trying to push the emotion down," she told The Hollywood Reporter. "During the pandemic, I've discovered just how much pushing the emotion down away, protecting myself, that I've I been doing — I don't think I've cried more since I was probably 14."
One difficult thing the actor-director went through while COVID-19 restrictions were in full effect was not being able to experience the thrill of sharing her precious work, "One Night in Miami...," with people in the way it deserved. Understandably, King teared up as she told Vanity Fair, "We never got the opportunity to see our film with an audience. I'm grateful to be healthy. I'm grateful that all of our crew and cast are healthy. ... But we didn't get a chance to share that."
But like many others, one of the most incomprehensible experiences for King was learning of people she knew who were sadly lost to the virus. "Sometimes it's even as simple as, now that things are opening up and you're going to your regular store or someplace that you used to go, to frequent, and to find out that face, that person that you knew so well is no longer with us, is ... hmmmm," she told "CBS This Morning: Saturday" (via CBS News), pausing as she shed tears.
Regina King's son died by suicide
As hard as Regina King was hit by learning of the untimely deaths of acquaintances during the COVID-19 pandemic, it's hard to imagine any experience being more horribly painful than losing her beloved only son, Ian Alexander Jr. The 26-year-old tragically died by suicide in January 2022.
Ian Jr., a musician who went by Desduné, wrote on Twitter days before his death, "I don't think instagram is healthy for me," prompting discussions about how much social media may have affected his mental health. The young artist had released two singles on Spotify, one titled "Work It Out" in 2021, and one called "Green Eyes" in 2022. He was scheduled to play a show in Los Angeles just days after his death, according to his last Instagram post.
"Our family is devastated at the deepest level by the loss of Ian," Regina King told People in a statement at the time. "He is such a bright light who cared so deeply about the happiness of others. Our family asks for respectful consideration during this private time. Thank you."
If you or anyone you know is having suicidal thoughts, please call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (8255).